From the moment Donald Trump first uttered his slogan about “Making America Great Again,” his critics countered that what he really wanted was to return to an era when white men ran the ship of state.

So far the president-elect is doing little to dispel their fears. Trump’s first five picks for key posts are all white males, several of whom are causing chills to run down the spines of civil libertarians.

Multiple news outlets Friday reported that Trump has settled on Alabama GOP Sen. Jeff Sessions, as his pick for attorney general; Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn as his national security advisor; and Rep. Mike Pompeo, a Republican from Kansas, as his CIA director. Those selections come on the heels of Trump announcing that Steve Bannon, executive chairman of the alt-right website Breitbart News, will be his chief strategist, and Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus will serve as chief of staff.

The early appointments have already fueled fears that Trump is preparing to stock his administration full of hard-line white male loyalists.

But David Brady, a senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, said Trump might not pay a political price for doing so. “His supporters are not going to be upset by the fact that he did this,” Brady said. “Those are the people he cares about.”

Pompeo, a former Army officer, is a Tea Party devotee who played a leading role in the House investigation into the 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya.

Sessions and Flynn, two of Trump’s most devoted allies during the campaign, are the more controversial picks for a president who has been accused of fanning racist and anti-Islamic sentiment.

In 1986, the Republican-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee rejected Sessions’ nomination to a federal judgeship after hearing testimony from former colleagues that he had referred to the NAACP and other civil rights groups as “un-American” and “Communist-inspired,” according to the New York Times. One African-American colleague testified that Sessions referred to him as “boy.”

Flynn, who was fired by President Barack Obama as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, has claimed that Islamic law is spreading in the U.S. On Twitter, he shared fake news stories and wrote, “Fear of Muslims is RATIONAL.”

Trump’s early picks appear to be a break from the precedent set by former President Bill Clinton, who had campaigned on a pledge to assemble a cabinet that “looks like America.” One of Clinton’s first cabinet selections was Donna Shalala to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. He was also insistent on having a female attorney general, although his first two picks had to withdraw their candidacies before Janet Reno got the job.

George W. Bush quickly picked Colin Powell, an African-American, as his secretary of state. He was later succeeded by another early appointee of Bush’s: Stanford Provost Condoleezza Rice, who first served as national security adviser and is also African-American. She later went on to serve as secretary of state.

President Obama’s first official cabinet selections included Hillary Clinton as secretary of state and Eric Holder, who is African-American, as attorney general.

But many observers say it is much too early to tell how diverse Trump’s high-level appointees will be. Women currently rumored for cabinet posts include South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who is half Indo-American, as secretary of state and former Washington, D.C., schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee, a charter schools devotee who is Asian-American, as education secretary. Former Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer is said to be a potential candidate for interior secretary.

Still, the lack of female appointees thus far is “worrisome,” said Nichola Gutgold, the author of “Paving the Way for Madam President.”

“Having women in key positions is absolutely critical to the future parity of women in American politics,” said Gutgold, a professor of arts and sciences at Penn State, Lehigh Valley. “Trump ran for president saying that no one respects women more than him. We need to see that” when it comes to appointments.

Brady said that the last Bush administration made a conscious effort to roll out an administration that reflected the nation’s diversity. That might not be an easy task for Trump given that his inner circle during the campaign consisted primarily of his family members and white men.

His most prominent black surrogate, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, has already said he does not plan to serve Trump’s administration.

“He values loyalty a lot,” Brady said of Trump. “And there were no prominent Latinos and no prominent African-Americans other than Carson out campaigning for him.”

Haley was a critic of Trump’s during the Republican primaries, as is another rumored candidate to head the State Department: Mitt Romney.

The one political downside of eschewing political correctness with top appointments, Brady said, is that he’s sending a message to supporters that his team is going to shake up Washington – and that could boost their expectations for his presidency.

“If I were him, I’d try to downplay expectations,” Brady said. “It’s very hard to change things. This is a country with 300 million people and a big time economy; those are boats that don’t turn around quickly.”

Matthew Artz joined the Bay Area News Group 10 years ago and has covered Oakland City Hall, Contra Costa County and Oakland A’s and Raiders’ never ending search for new stadiums. Since taking over the political beat just in time for the wackiest presidential race in memory, he has been surprised to learn that many of the talking heads he wasted his teenage years watching -- Al Hunt, Mort Kondracke, Fred Barnes, etc. -- are not only still alive. They also still have hair. He can recite a Bernie Sanders stump speech without a teleprompter. And, as a native New Yorker, he’s been calling stuff “yooge” way before the Donald and Bernie mainstreamed it.

More in Politics

A long-awaited plan to keep the Raiders in Oakland was announced late Friday by city and council officials. It includes a public investment of $350 million, pegged to the value of the Coliseum land and infrastructure improvements.